That's What Tendrils Are For
by Todd's Pet
Summary: A PWP that grew tendrils, so to speak, with a wafer-thin plot wafting around some serious wraith-human smut! A big departure from my usual style and my thanks to Isolde for her support in this experiment - I hope you like it. Very adult content.


Isn't That What Tendrils Are For?

Chapter One

As soon as he enters his quarters he hears the sound of running water and knows she's in the shower. Almost turning around, he feels the overwhelming need to avoid the conflicting feelings she produces in him – he's tired and he doesn't need the complication right now. But instead, as if he had lost control of his own body, he finds himself shrugging off his heavy coat and slipping into the shadows opposite the shower alcove and watching her, as he has done every day now for weeks.

It should have been simple, definitely convenient, to have a human slave but he hadn't reckoned on the effect it would have on him, on the truly chaotic emotions churning his insides, emotions he does not want to feel, even less express. They leave him… off kilter, unbalanced and now he wonders what his superior's intention was – to develop or damage?

Since his first post-puberty pheromone burst happened last month he had been distracted, inefficient, troubled by feelings and sensations he didn't understand. Then his division supervisor had brought this woman to his quarters and simply told him, "Get it out of your system." But he doesn't know what it is he's meant to purge from himself.

Watching her luxuriate under the water even he can see that she takes as much sensual pleasure from taking the shower as he does from watching her. Inexperienced he may be but he understands sensuality.

Glinting like gold his eyes drink in her strangely alluring soft flesh, wet and shiny, the water highlighting the sweeps and dips of her curves as she twists and turns and stretches, smoothing foam over her body. The smell of the soap mingles with the more subtle scent that emanates from between her thighs; it drifts up his nostrils like wisps of smoke, soaking into his viper pits until he can taste her arousal.

The water runs in tiny streams down her arms, her back, her legs, as if they were caressing her. It pools in the cleavage between her breasts as she clasps her arms around herself, then cascades down the gentle sweep of her stomach when she lets go. A single drop hangs, almost motionless, from the tip of one breast, as if it were reluctant to let go.

These things the humans call nipples fascinate him; they seem to have a life of their own; he knows now, from all the times he's watched her in the shower, that the longer she stands there, facing the hard water jet and letting it beat down onto her chest, the harder those nipples will become, until they stand out like tiny fingertips.

The observation makes him wonder what they would feel like under his hands and he becomes aware of a similar effect on a part of his own body and his hand strays down to his groin. Sometimes the pressure there is more than just inconvenient and uncomfortable. Sometimes, while on duty at his work station he finds himself thinking about her like this and, while he struggles to hide the mental effects from his brothers, he is grateful their long, heavy uniform coats hide the physical effect.

oOo

Unexpectedly, she turns and looks straight at him. Momentarily startled, he tries to melt back into the shadows. He didn't think that he had made any sound, but no, now it's obvious that she's seen him watching her. A half smile flutters around her full lipsand her eyes briefly flicker down to his groin as she holds her hand out to him and steps out of the shower basin, her bare feet making no sound but leaving wet imprints on the floor as she covers the few feet of space between them.

He holds his breath; his back is almost against the wall, there is nowhere for him to go when she stands a mere foot in front of him, dripping water into little pools around her own feet. The smell of her is strong in his nostrils and viper pits and he's unaware that his hand still hovers at his own genitals until she covers it with her soft, wet hand.

As her fingertips stroke the back of his hand briefly his eyes widen when she slips her hand beneath his and presses it against his swollen member. Heat seeps through the leather of his pants, and he breaths in, the sound sharp, before making a half-hearted attempt to push her away. "Don't," he whispers reluctantly. A trickle of laughter escapes from her and instead, she steps in closer, tilting her face like a flower and stretches to reach his ear with the soft brush of her mouth.

"Shush, it's all right," she whispers, as if she were soothing a distraught child, planting little kisses in the sensitive spot where his neck meets his shoulder, sending little shivers down his spine that escalate into tremors when she starts to undo the fastening on his pants. His penis springs violently from the sudden release of its leather restraint and he gasps audibly when she wraps her small, warm fingers around the thick shaft of it. The pressure in his bowels is almost unbearable now and his head is full of the scent of her.

With agonising slowness, she moves her hand up and down his shaft while, with her other hand, she lifts his right hand and places it on one of her breasts. The sensation of that little nub of her flesh nestling just within his feeding slit is tantalisingly delicious as she arches her back and pushes her body up toward his hand, shifting her angle and rubbing herself against his palm. A mixture of astonishment and curiosity washes over him as her nipple starts to grow and harden, nudging deeper into his feeding slit, urging it to open and tingle in anticipation. His member responds similarly, growing and hardening in her hand; he becomes aware that both it and his feeding slit are leaking fluid and a strangled moan issues from his throat.

A sudden dizziness overwhelms him as the pressure in his guts releases in an explosion of intense pleasure, the sensations rippling through his body. Muscles dormant for centuries wake and announce their presence with deep spasms, making his spine shudder as his shaft twitches in her hand. He snarls out loud, shaken by the force of his release, and stares down into human eyes, meeting her gaze as she continues to hold him tight in her palm.

"What did you do? What just happened?" he murmurs, half-dazed and slumped against the wall.

Reaching out behind herself with the hand she had held him with, now covered in a thick slick of slime, she holds it under the stream of water. The sudden sharp, tang of a musky odour, very different from her scent, hits his nostrils briefly and then is washed away with the slime and the water running over her hand.

Turning back to him, she presses her lips softly against his cheek. "You really don't know do you?" she says, turning sky-blue eyes up to meet his sunshine-gold eyes. Seeing genuine confusion there, she takes his hand and turns towards his sleep chamber. "You and I need to have a talk," she tells him.

"What about?" he asks, allows her to lead him into the room.

"Oh, birds and bees, which is kind of ironic, when you think about it, you being descended from insects…" The soft trilling sound of her laughter sets his groin pulsating again.

Chapter Two

"You have been with many wraith?" he asks her plainly, curious at her apparent expertise.

"None actually," she replies, relaxed and completely un-insulted. "You're my first." Narrowing his eyes at her, he tilts his head, unable to believe that she could be as inexperienced as him and know how to do what she just did. She can't help a tiny smile twitching at one corner of her mouth at his obvious disbelief and adds, "I've been with quite a few human males though."

"I believe we are a bit different," he volunteers.

"Variations on a theme," she shrugs. Reaching around to the back of his waist**,** she grasps the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head, the neck of it catching his hair up into a curtain of silk that sweeps across her face as it falls back down around his shoulders. He reaches up to flick it back over his shoulders so it falls straight and smooth down his back to his waist, the way he usually wears it. Her eyes are drawn to the hard, sinewy muscles of his arms bunching up as he does so, but then she reaches down to his hips, pushing at his still unfastened pants and sliding them down over his tightly muscled thighs. Almost instantly, his penis springs out toward her, demanding her attention.

She smiles as she kneels in front of him, pulls his boots off impatiently and encourages him to step out of his leathers and then she sits back on her heels and looks up at him, the first wraith she has ever seen naked and far more impressive than any human male she has ever seen. "Magnificent," she says, the word escaping her lips like a sigh.

Wraith pride kicking in, he tilts his chin, making his goatee glint like silver in the soft pool of blue light he stands in. He looks like a work of art, some kind of statue, the muted green of his skin, taut over well-defined muscles, shining like semi-precious jade. Standing tall and straight as a beech tree, he exudes raw maleness – and not just because of the size of his cock standing to attention, slick and so pale it almost glows in the dim light. He shifts his weight and it beckons to her, urging her to reach up and close one hand around it, her fingers barely meeting around its girth. Teasingly briefly she strokes the impressive length and then slides her hand between his thighs. Her eyes widen and she tilts her head up to look him in the eyes. "No balls?"

He lets a short snort of air escape his nose and replies, "If you mean sperm production organs, they're inside my body."

"No use kicking a wraith in the crotch if he gets too frisky, huh?"

Hesitating, he wonders just how much he should tell her, then realises if they are to mate he can hide nothing. "Warriors can't afford to be vulnerable. They descend when they're needed… everything needed for reproduction is… retractable…."

oOo

Without warning he suddenly folds at the waist and stoops down to wrap his arms around her shoulders, sweeping her upright and, at the same time, twisting with her in his arms to deposit her on the bed. Inexperienced he may be perhaps, but his instincts are the same as any male and he lowers his body down to hers, pressing into every contour until she feels as if they might melt into each other.

She hasn't had sex since before she was taken by the wraith, several months ago now and her own genitals are screaming at her, hungry to have him inside her. Instinctively, she wraps her arms around his torso and holds him tightly against herself, entwining her legs around his, pressing her hips against him until she can feel the tip of his penis against her own sex. She pushes up to meet him with the urgency of her desire to have him, but for some reason he seems to be holding back.

The theory behind the process, of course is common knowledge – off duty officers' talk can get bawdy – but his brothers always seem to mock about how fragile human women are and so he hesitates, twisting his head to the side to look her in the eye.

"I don't want to hurt you," he says, inexperience, confusion and long-denied sexual need combining to make his voice soft, husky – almost kind.

But she's now past the point of no return and she grasps his face between her two hands, looking deep into his eyes where he can see her hunger burning as surely as any time he has felt the hunger to feed burn in his own belly.

Her voice rasps when she whispers intently, "I don't care, just fuck me!"

His maleness has been hovering at the mouth of her core and now, needing no further encouragement, he slides into her at last, her want grasping him greedily as she pushes up to meet him, grinding her pelvis into him, as if his length was not enough and she would have all of him inside her if she could.

oOo

Staggered by how much he's sent her senses into overdrive – the sight, sound, smell and taste of him is overwhelming – she lets herself drown in him, not caring if she ever surfaces again. It feels as if he's all hands, caressing her all over, the surface of her skin tingling with what feels like the touch of several hands, fingers moving, endlessly exploring. Watching his right hand on her breasts, she can feel the yawning feeding slit, and lifts her eyes to scan his face, curiosity and pleasure intermingled there, clear reverence in his touch as he caresses the soft mounds. The tender peak he is fascinated with hardens into the maw as the long fingers of his other hand stroke her stomach and curl round her thigh, the tip of one finger probing the cleft there, searching for a way in…

But when he lifts his other hand to stroke her hair the probing fingertip continues its quest and she twists her head to look down. Suddenly her eyes widen in alarm and she cries out. "What the hell is that?"

oOo

In an instant, the spell is broken. As he leaps away from her she sees what looks like some kind of tendrils retracting, shooting back into his crotch from where they came at incredible speed. More slowly but just as decisively, his penis softens and starts to retract until he's left standing there with an expression like a small child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Oh, my god, I'm sorry," she flusters, realising what she's done. Clearly there's more difference between wraith and human males than she thought, and whatever that thing from his body is it's gone now.

He stands at the foot of the bed, towering over her, intimidating in his anger and embarrassment. In the space of a few seconds a million conflicting emotions flash across his face like some perverse magic lantern show, then his eyes narrow, the slit pupils becoming thin lines of black in flashing yellow, and he growls long and deep before snatching up his pants, turning on his heel and stomping out of the room without a single word.

"No, wait! Please…" she tries to call after him, but it's too late. The moment is ruined, their passion lying in tatters among the tangled sheets. "Damn it to hell!" she curses, berating herself repeatedly as she searches for her clothes and tries to work out how she's going to find her way back to this point with him so they can try again.

Chapter Three

They're both distracted all the next day, but where she can exorcise it by doing her domestic chores more vigorously than normal, he struggles to focus on his bridge tasks, almost counting down the minutes until his watch is over and he can lose himself in the endless corridors of the hive. Deep in his own mental tumult, he does not hear the other wraith come up behind him until he's so close he can smell him. He whips his head around and snarls a warning before realising it's his pod brother.

"Be calm, brother," the other wraith tells him, "Though I sense that's far from the case. You should have a care what thoughts you broadcast."

"We are close; you can sense my mind more deeply than others," he replies in clipped tones as they walk through the long hallways to the junior quarters.

"Believe me, more than your pod brothers were aware of it. It would not be wise to draw attention to yourself for the wrong reasons."

"I am…" he searches for the right words, "…temporarily distracted."

"Perhaps, but you should find a way to ease your… distraction sooner rather than later." The other wraith turns as he speaks, halting before he veers off down a side passage to his own rooms, the thin rim of gold surrounding his slit pupils, grown wide in the dim hive light, glitters with a clear warning to his companion. "I'll call by your quarters later," he continues. "I have something that might ease your… temporary distraction."

oOo

Little more than an hour later, his door alert chimes out while he'sbusy at his computer station filling out reports – wraith hate paperwork and get their juniors to do the task and, if they're ambitious and want to move up the ranks, the juniors do the work as best they can even though it bores them even more. In his preoccupied mental state he has re-written this report more than three times now and almost welcomes the interruption, getting up to answer his visitor. The pod brother who'd warned him stands furtively in the doorway, mouth turned up at one corner in an impish smirk. "Take these," he hisses, looking both ways along the corridor in an exaggerated show of clandestine caution before stepping through the doorway and passing across a small pile of tech tablets.

"What are they?"

"Best quality black market goods," the other wraith says, now smiling broadly. His gold eyes glint as they search the room behind the other's shoulder, looking for the human female who is causing all this emotional turmoil in his brother. When he gets no reply, he rolls his eyes in exasperation. "Wraith-human porn, brother!" he explains, pushing the tablets into the other wraith's hands. "Perhaps you should leave them lying around for your new worshipper to find. She might get the hint."

"That's not the problem," the other sighs.

"You've done it? Ha! I knew you had it in you! The rest of our division were ready to start taking bets on when you'd finally give up your virginity."

The uncomfortable mixture of anger and embarrassment escapes as a hissing snarl from between his sharp teeth, his upper lip curled. "This is what you talk about in the training classrooms?" he demands churlishly.

"You can't expect anything else when you spend all your time with your nose buried in your studies while your cohorts are exploring the delights of their first human worshippers!" His colleague leans in close and nudges him in the ribs with a hard, sharp elbow. "So, what's she like?"

Sighing in resignation and feeling the need to confide in someone he can trust, he briefly relates what had happened yesterday, eliciting a long, low whistle of unconcealed admiration from the other wraith. "Wow! Hand-job in the shower… So what's your problem?"

"Well, she seemed willing enough at first – quite keen actually, but when my… when they came out…"

"Oh, that – they get used to them – some even get to like it," his furtive guest says with a snort of laughter. "As I said, leave those" – he indicates the tablets with a nod of his head – "where she'll find them – call it educational."

As he turns to leave he literally bumps into the woman he'd been so eager to catch a glimpse of moments earlier. She steps back, deferential, her head bowed and clutching a bundle of laundry to her chest. While she murmurs suitable apologies he takes her chin in his hand, lifting her face up to look at her. With a wide grin, he turns to his cohort and tells him, "I can see why you're distracted, brother." He lets go of her face, spins on his heel and strides off down the corridor, calling over his shoulder, "Let me know how you get on."

As if in a trance, she stands watching the other wraith's back as he retreats off into the gloom of the corridor, so she's startled when her wraith's deep, multi-toned voice tells her, "Don't stand in the hallway all night."

Embarrassed, she offers up an uncertain smile as she walks past him into the room, fretting over what sort of distraction she could cause to bring one of his pod brothers to his door. It's obvious he has confided in that one, and the thought makes her more nervous. All day she has been distracted, trying out different scenarios in her head, rehearsing speeches and searching for ways she might win back his trust and make day-to-day living more pleasant than the strained and distant politeness between them now.

Clutching his laundry to her chest she walks toward his sleep chamber to put his clothing away, noticing that he is merely hovering, holding a pile of tech tablets and looking almost as awkward as she feels. "Are those reports?" she asks him, trying desperately to be helpful. "Can I help you with them?"

"No!" he snaps, making her jump, startled at his abruptness, and she scuttles toward the other room, head down, arms wrapped around the bundle of his clean shirts. When he comes into the room behind her, she is hanging his clothes in the closet. She grasps the closet door and slides it across, it's gnarled cobwebbed surface making it seem to disappear into the wall of the hive, and when she turns back he's stooping at the head of his bed, tucking something in under the pillows.

He stands up sharply and glares when he sees her looking at him. "I have much work to do," he tells her brusquely. "Go to bed; you don't need to wait for me." Turning towards the other room and his work, he hears her soft sigh and senses disappointment hanging around her like a cloud and he adds, "I'll be up all night, so you may sleep in my bed instead of your cot – if you want to," and he leaves the room without looking back.

oOo

Briefly she toys with the idea of defying him and going through to the other room anyway to try to mend things with him, but what could she say? The thought that she had completely ruined any chance they had of a companionable relationship with her thoughtless, throwaway remark makes her heart feel heavy. But why should she feel so despondent? She reminds herself that she is just his slave after all and whether or not they mate should make no difference so long as she does her tasks efficiently and to his liking.

But, oh, he is so beautiful! Wrapping her arms around herself, she hugs close the memory of his naked body; her skin blushes as she recalls the touch of his hands, her own hands tingling as she remembers how the smooth, hard curves of his muscles felt beneath them, how she had held him so tightly in her palm, how he had felt inside her…

She shakes her head, telling herself to get a grip; she's no lovesick teenager and she'll find a way to mend his bruised ego and all will be well… won't it? It will have to be if she's going to survive on a wraith hive, so she decides to sleep on it after all – especially as he's given her permission to sleep in his bed. The thought makes her pause; he wouldn't have done that if he'd still been angry with her, would he? Taking comfort from the command, she brushes out her hair and undresses, weighing up and dissecting his words and actions as she does so, finally slipping in under the soft, warm furs to curl up in the middle of his huge bed.

But almost the instant she lays her head down she knows she won't be getting any sleep here… his scent is everywhere, it surrounds her, engulfing her in such intense memories of their attempted mating that she doesn't know whether to wallow in it or get up and sleep in her own meagre cot in the corner. Agitated, she pushes her hand up under the cushion beneath her head and her fingers come up against something hard, pulling out the tech tablets she'd seen him with earlier. She sits up and looks down at them, wondering why he'd hidden them here and if she could dare look at them.

Twisting to look over her shoulder at the room door, and satisfied that she's alone, she thumbs the keypad in the corner and the small screen in her hand lights up, casting a green reflection onto her blue eyes as they widen more with each image that she sees. Flicking the toggle beside the screen with her thumb, her other hand involuntarily drifts to her throat as the images slide by… images of wraith and humans in the throes of mating, images that hold nothing back, images that show quite clearly that there is indeed a significant difference between wraith and human males.

oOo

So deeply engrossed is she that she doesn't notice him lurking in the shadows of the doorway, watching her the way he used to watch her in the shower. Anxious at first, he relaxes as she starts to turn the screen in her hand this way and that, peering closely at some of the images. Every now and then she catches her bottom lip in her small, flat teeth; her tiny gasps an intoxicating mixture of embarrassment and lust. If she were not so intent on her snooping of his newly-acquired stash of porn – left where she could not help but find it – she would have seen his eyes glitter fiercely in the gloom, his sensual mouth widen in a sly grin, watching her for several minutes before turning back into the other room, leaving her to satisfy her furtive curiosity.

Now he knows she's still interested in mating with him; more than interested, her face was aglow with fascination, she was enthralled, tantalised, aroused… and now all he has to do is give her a little time, time for her own desires to drive her to satisfy her curiosity up close and personal.

Chapter Four

The next day she's even more distracted than the last, her mind repeatedly dragging her thoughts back to those images on the tablets that had given her such a restless, sleepless night. In spite of the luxury of his spacious bed, piled high with soft warm furs, she tossed and turned the whole night, hoping that he would tire of his work and come to bed, but praying that he'd work all night as he'd said he would. As it was, he was already gone when she finally dragged herself from the room and headed off for her own work shift.

Normally she loves her work in the hive's garden, growing fruit and vegetables to feed the human worshippers who live in the hive, but today she barely notices the caress of the soft soil through her fingers as she plants up seedlings and stakes tomato plants. Moving on to working in the courgette beds, she cuts one of the heavy, mature fruits carefully from its stalk. But her mind being elsewhere, she's not careful enough and she drops it. Mindful of how precious food is here she makes a grab for it, scraping the back of her hand on the spikes of the plant's stalks and tangling her fingers in its tendrils.

Suddenly her mind clears and snaps back to the here and now like a rubber band as she looks down at her hand, her fingers wrapped around the length of the thick fruit the way they had held his… She snatches her hand from the entrails of the plant and two tendrils snap off, caught up and left trailing from her fingertips, which she holds up and examines minutely for several minutes.

"That's it!" she breathes exultantly. Rushing from the arboretum, dropping the courgette carefully in the basket by the door, she heads as fast as her legs will carry her without attracting too much attention to herself back to his quarters where she knows he'll have finished his bridge watch by now.

oOo

It won't be long now… he finds his thoughts drifting frequently from the flight engineering exam revision he ought to be doing, his eyes drawn repeatedly to the window to gaze out at the stars, his mind constantly conjuring up images of her in the shower, of her sleeping, of her undressing him and holding him in her small, soft, warm hand… Not long before he'll know for certain. He can sense her presence, her excitement, getting closer as she rushes through the hive to him. But it's not done yet, he reminds himself; there are a few moves still to play in this game before he can finally claim the prize.

Pretending to be engrossed in his studies when she enters the room, flushed and breathless from her rush to get there, his skin tingles with anticipation as she steps up behind him, her voice soft as she speaks. "You work too hard; you're tense and tired," she observes, putting her hands on his shoulders and starting to knead his knotted muscles.

"And you are repulsed so I release you from any obligation to me in that area," he says bluntly, his voice flat. The lack of anger and arrogance ought to have warned her there's more to this statement than just a bruised ego. Fully aware of the tone of her emotions, he's waited impatiently for her to make her move, knowing that they had attempted too much too soon without knowing anything about each others' species. But the time is right to play the closing moves in this game; to give the last push and see what direction she takes.

Wounded by his apparent rejection, she swallows hard, wondering just how much she'd hurt his feelings even though she knows a wraith would never admit to such a thing. "That could not be further from the truth," she says, her jaw rigid from the effort of keeping her voice even, trying not to let her emotions get in the way. "It would be my pleasure to attend to all of your needs," she tells him carefully, placing a heavy emphasis on the word 'all'.

He twists round in his seat, looking up at her incredulously at first but then almost trustingly. For someone nearly four thousand years old he can look so young sometimes, she thinks and the thought brings with it a minor revelation: It dawns on her that it's important to her to get this right; that _he_ is important to her, that she actually cares about him.

"I was not repulsed," she tells him dejectedly, "merely taken by surprise. I…"

She sighs deeply and sinks onto the bench alongside his work desk. "I don't want you to be angry with me, but last night… in your bed… I found…"

"Go on," he demands, waiting to see just how honest she'll be with him.

"Tech tablets… with pictures…" she looks down at her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers, her face such a picture of anxiety that he has to grit his teeth to stop from sweeping her up into his arms right this instant and instead wait for the game to play out. Sensing her rallying her courage as she lifts her face to his, he tries to keep his expression stern when she breathlessly asks him, "Wraith have porn? I mean that is what those images are, isn't it? Did you leave them there deliberately? You knew I would find them, didn't you? And what _are_ those things anyway?"

"So many questions…" he says, unable to hold back his smile any longer. "To answer your most pressing query, they're retractable tentacles, much like the ones in our hibernation pods. Some of my brothers jokingly refer to them as 'grapplers', because –"

"They hold on?"

"Indeed," he says, trying to suppress a grin.

"But why?" she presses, "What are they for, what do they do?"

"They hold on," he repeats with a shrug, a little reluctant to indulge her with a biology lesson when he'd far rather be indulging himself in a practical demonstration. She slants her mouth to one side and raises one eyebrow in an expression of chagrin and he sighs before continuing. "Wraith females are… less accommodating than human females; they hold her close enough for long enough to… well, to ensure fertilisation. They also excrete hormones into her skin that increase her fertility."

"Do they do that with humans… the hormones, I mean?" she asks, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"No, but I've been told… it's only rumour bandied about in the younger divisions, really…"

"Young wraith like you?" she reminds him. "That's what your pod brother was here for, wasn't it? He gave you those tablets."

Seeing her intelligence glitter in her eyes, knowing that she's almost worked out the game, he knows for certain now – this woman is curious enough to make her worth the effort, astute enough to be of help to him as more than just a domestic slave, cares about him enough to warrant bonding her to him. Reaching out to take her hand in his, he replies, "Yes. He told me that many human females come to like them. Our hormones don't make you more fertile but they do make you more… receptive…"

Her face breaks into a broad and mischievous grin as she stands, taking both of his hands in hers, walking backwards and leading him toward the other room. "Perhaps we should find out for ourselves if he's right."

For all their differences it seems post-adolescent wraith have the same sense of urgency as young human males for he sweeps her up into his arms in one smooth movement, striding purposefully to his sleep chamber, almost as if he wants to get there before she changes her mind.

Chapter Five

As he carries her he dips his head down to hers and presses his lips to her forehead, her nose, her cheek, until she lifts her face up to his, meeting his small, soft kisses as he explores her lips with his own, running the tip of his tongue across her bottom lip and then across his own, like a reptile tasting the air. In a few long strides he lays her down on the bed, pulling her shirt over her head as he does. Bending over her he lowers her into the soft tumble of furs, bringing his head down to hers, gravity and his own weight behind him as his mouth crushes hers in a deep, lingering kiss that leaves her breathless.

"Kisses?" she gasps, knowing that wraith are not orally fixated, so do not normally kiss like humans do.

"You're not the only one who's done their homework," he tells her with a wry half-smile that sets a tiny pulse ticking away deep within her pubis. Luxuriating in the soft caress of the furs against her bare back, she lies watching him as he eagerly yanks his shirt off at the same time as he kicks off his boots, his long, elegant fingers fumble momentarily with the fastenings of his pants, so eager is he to remove all obstacles between his flesh and hers. Finally stepping out of them, he leaves them discarded on the floor and lunges onto the end of the bed, crawling towards her like a predator in ambush of his prey.

He plants dozens of soft little kisses along the length of her legs as he works his way towards her, pushing the fabric of her skirts aside, letting it waft the scent of her deepening arousal across his viper pits, so he can taste her long before he gets to the source of her need, and when he presses his lips to her mound her breath catches in a little choke in her throat. Involuntarily she arches her back, pushing her hips up to meet him, and in response he dips his tongue into her, tasting the sweetness of her desire, his excitement heightened by the knowledge that her hunger is for him.

His sharp claws, cold in contrast to the fevered heat of his fingertips, delve the depths between her thighs, pushing insistently, parting her legs to gain access while her hands find the back of his head and hold him there as she presses herself toward him, pushing his long fingers deeper, encouraging his tongue in its exquisite exploration of her.

Almost bereft when he lifts his head, she watches him walk his hands along the bed on either side of her, his shoulder blades gliding past each other like a stalking cat, setting the bony ridges down his spine rippling in accord with the big muscles of his back. Supporting himself with his arms, he hovers over her, face to face, the pure white silk curtain of his hair falling around them both and his reptile eyes burning into her, brimming with desire and glittering, greedy with a longing that sets every inch of her skin ablaze. She can feel her sex swollen, aching to have him inside her, the glans of his shaft pushing at her entrance until she thrusts her hips upward, devouring his length with her hunger, sighing as he slides into her slowly, deeper and deeper until he fills the void of emptiness inside her at last, fitting together so perfectly.

Grabbing great fistfuls of the soft silk strands of his hair, she buries her moans in his neck, wrapping her legs around his hips as if she could weld them together by the sheer force of her yearning for him. This time she knows full well what is wrapping itself over the mounds of her butt, coiling themselves around her thighs, holding her to him fast and tight against the rhythmic heat of his cock thrusting deeper and faster, questing for the very core of her being. Not caring if it's hormones seeping into her skin from these appendages or not; all she knows is she has never wanted anything as much as she wants him right now.

She feels his growl before she hears it, beginning like a pre-eruption deep in his belly and expanding up through his torso, spreading out through his ribcage and finally exploding in a roar of triumph from between bared and clenched pointed teeth. Seconds later, her climax explodes like a kaleidoscope of colour searing her mind until it is filled with nothing but him; for that instant, nothing exists in her world but the feel and the taste and the smell of him. Like the sudden ebb of a flash flood their clenched muscles relax and they collapse against each other, spent, exhausted, and utterly, blissfully, contented.

oOo

Purring softly as he lies in the quiet gloom, he listens to her breathing settle, his satisfaction creating a deep and calming sound that vibrates through her chest as she lies against him, feeling ironically safer and happier, here on a hive and in the arms of a wraith, than she has ever felt in her whole life. Nestled into the crook of his arm, her head rests in the dip of where his shoulder meets his chest. She feels so fulfilled that she hums quietly to herself in harmony with his purring while she trails her fingertips up and down his stomach.

"Did I ever tell you that I used to be a gardener?" Her soft voice breaks the silence and he tucks his chin in to look down at her face, but carries on dragging his clawed fingers lightly through her hair as he speaks.

"No. There's much about you I don't know," he says, giving her tacit permission to carry on speaking.

"I work in the arboretum now, growing food for the humans here on the hive. My favourites are courgettes. Do you know that they have lots of tendrils and they grow so fast that in the artificial daylight of the hive garden you can almost sit and watch them grow and move, twirling around, looking for something to grab hold of…"

Trying to suppress a grin of amusement he waits in silence for her to say what she needs to say to him, his eyes following her movements as she lifts herself up, leaning on one elbow to look down at him where he lays beside her. "I think they're such beautiful, fascinating things," she tells him. "Sometimes I touch my finger to the tip of one of them just to see if it will grab on to me…"

She looks down at his groin and sees the tiniest little green shoot, just starting to peek out from behind his apparently ever-ready penis. A mottled spring green colour, curious but shy, it looks for all the world like the tendrils of the courgettes she so loves to grow, except that this one is only slightly less thick than her own little finger. Tentatively she touches a fingertip to the tip of his tendril. To her delight, it curls around her finger and starts to grow and swell until it's a little thicker than her thumb, nudging its way up her hand, around her wrist, slithering along her arm, searching and seeking, tasting as it goes, exploring, winding its way slowly up her arm, like a living vine. She watches it intently, deeply curious.

"You're trying to say my tentacles are like the tendrils on your plants?" he asks her gently, "And you think they're beautiful?" In reply she merely makes a soft mhmm sound and reaches out a fingertip again to stroke the fleshy vine wrapped around her arm. "What are the tendrils on your food plants for?" he asks, his mind as curious to explore as his body.

"Support," she says, not looking away from the part of him that is so alien, so different from humans, and yet these ropes of his flesh enfold her with such gently questing tenderness that she feels more deeply loved by him than any human ever could. "They seek out something to cling to, something to support them so they can grow tall and strong." His smile lets her know that he's understood her. "Like you," she says and leans into his chest, wrapped in his arms, wrapped in his tendrils, wrapped in his love, there's no other place she wants to be

oOo

When they wake the next morning they mate again, taking their time, indulging every sense, learning each others bodies with slow, unhurried concentration. When they finally draw apart reluctantly to start their separate days, he lies and watches her pad barefoot across the room to the shower cubicle. Sensing his eyes on her she turns and looks at him teasingly over her shoulder. "You don't have to watch in the shadows anymore." She holds her hand out to him. "Come and join me."

Rising languidly, the muscles of his long, lean frame move fluidly as he walks toward her. "This time I will," he says, with a wicked gleam in his eye, "But I think I may still want to just watch now and then." As he steps under the water with her and she watches it soak through his hair until the silken threads cling to the wiry biceps in his arms, she thinks that perhaps she might want to watch him from the shadows now and then, too.

"You will no doubt become a very popular worshipper," he tells her, tipping a tiny blob from the contents of a small bottle onto the top of her head, turning her with her back to him and studiously avoiding her eyes.

"You want me to go to others?" she asks, surprised by the level of alarm clearly ringing in her voice.

"If you want to," he says, calmly stroking foam through to the ends of her hair, apparently nonplussed with the whole idea, but in truth holding his breath for the result of the last move in his game. "It's not uncommon for a worshipper to serve the needs of several wraith." She twists her face around to him, his clawed fingers are still tangled in her long hair and he does nothing to extricate himself from the strands. Searching his face, she tries to decipher his inscrutable expression, knowing that her own face is far from unreadable. "You don't want to?" he asks, as if it needed to be confirmed.

"No, I don't… I'd rather… I mean if you…"

"I suppose I could make you my official concubine," he says with deliberate casualness. "But then you would have to keep yourself only to me." Her heart rushes into her mouth and she can hear it beating in her own ears, like the sound of waves in a seashell. "Is that what you want, for us to be bonded?" he asks her earnestly.

Her first reaction is to say she can't think of anything she wants more, but then she asks herself if she could grow to love this wraith and be with him and only him for how long, ten years, one hundred, longer? Could she do that if he doesn't feel the same way about her as she does about him?

Suddenly his face breaks into a smile that cuts through her confusion as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud on a fresh, spring morning. The warm humour she sees when she looks up into those glittering amber eyes tells her that he's teasing her mercilessly, that he's known all along how she feels about him and that he would possess her, kill rather than share her, even with his brothers. She realises he'd tuned into her emotions and is no doubt aware of her inner conversation, or at least the gist of it, and has played her like a musical instrument for the last few days. The strangest thing of all is that she truly doesn't mind.

"It's what I want – if you want it too," she says coyly, trying to play him at his own game.

"Oh, I want it, too. I want to keep you close, very close," he tells her, enfolding her into the cosset of his arms. "I want your support always, so I can grow strong," he tells her, his voice vibrating down her spine from where his warm lips lie against the nape of her neck. "After all, is that not what you told me tendrils are for?"

THE END


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